February 22: Malcolm's Worldmaking Practice: Reclaiming his Local and Global Legacy

Monday, February 22, 2021, 5:30-8:00 pm EST

Register for the Zoom webinar here.

Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Muslim Societies in partnership with the Shabazz Center are excited to put forth a discussion highlighting Malcolm X’s enduring vision at the intersections of Black radical power, Islam and global anti-imperialism. As we continue organizing around the movement for Black lives and strategize on how to build resilient communities in the wake of COVID-19, we seek to highlight the relevance of Malcolm’s vision and worldmaking practice specifically within the tradition of liberation theology, as a modality through which he framed dynamics of power, inequity, and sovereignty. In exploring Malcolm’s local and global legacy through this lens, we seek to use his framework to also aid in the decolonizing and reframing of the relationship between Columbia, the Harlem community and The Shabazz Center.

Panelists: Prof. Hisham Aidi, Prof. Marc Lamont Hill, Najha Zigbi-Johnson

Moderator: Sumaiya Amin Zama

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February 18: Shari'a Workshop: Sahih al-Bukhari's Criteria

Thursday, February 18, 2021, 4:00 PM EST

Register for the Zoom webinar here.

In this workshop, Issam Eido and Mohammed T. Safi will discuss their paper entitled “Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī's Criteria: An Epistemological Perspective.” In an innovative study of the Hadith corpus, the early records of statements and actions that, following the Qur’an, represent the second “source” for the Sharia, the authors consider connections between Islamic methods and conceptions and those of contemporary western thought on “testimony." They will be joined by Jonathan Brown, Scott Lucas, and Asma Sayeed.

Download article here.

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March 12: Making a Hidden Collection Visible: Columbia’s Collection of Muslim World Manuscripts

Friday, March 12, 2021, 1:00 PM EST

Register for the Zoom webinar here.

Join us in celebrating the publication of this special issue of the journal Philological Encounters, publicizing the contents and importance of Columbia’s collection of manuscripts from the Islamic world. The event will feature the authors from the special issue as well as two discussants, Evyn Kropf (U Michigan) and Konrad Hirschler (Freie Universität Berlin).

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The contributors:

  • Mohammad Sadegh Ansari (SUNY Geneseo)

  • Zeinab Azarbadegan (Columbia)

  • Trevor Brabyn (Independent)

  • Kaoukab Chebaro (Columbia)

  • Alexandre Roberts (USC)

  • Avinoam Shalem (Columbia)

  • Jane Rodgers Siegel (Columbia)

  • Tunç Şen (Columbia)

February 26: Adab Colloquium with Presenter Maryam Wasif Khan and Discussant Jennifer Dubrow

Friday, February 26, 2021, 1:10 PM - 3:00 PM EST

Register for the Zoom webinar here.

In this colloquium, Maryam Wasif Khan will discuss a chapter from her book, Who is a Muslim? Orientalism and Literary Populisms (Fordham, 2021). The book argues for a new history of Urdu prose fiction, one that takes into account its orientalist pasts and its religio-populist present. Chapter 4, “Mujāhid/Martyr,” suggests that the Progressive Writers’ Movement, though well-known to scholars of Urdu had a relatively minor impact on its literary development when compared to the bestselling, popular novels of writers such as Rashid ul-Kheiri, Nasim Hijazi and Razia Butt. The strident religio-nationalist nature of these novels, then, is what has shaped Urdu prose fiction in our present moment.

Learn more about the Adab Colloquium at MEI here.

If you are interested in attending this event please download the pre-circulated reading.

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February 16: Readings in the Khalidiyya: Libraries in late Ottoman and post-Ottoman Bilad al-Sham

Tuesday, February 16, 2021, 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

Register for the Zoom webinar here.

Join us for the next installment of Readings in the Khalidiyya, a series about The Khalidi Library’s manuscript collection, accessibility through digitization and new scholarly inquiries.

Konrad Hirschler, a leading scholar on regional libraries such as the Khalidiyya will give his talk, “Libraries in late Ottoman and post-Ottoman Bilad al-Sham: The Jerusalem Khalidiyya Library in Context" on 16 February 2021 at 1pm NY/ 8pm Jerusalem. He is Professor and Director, Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies.

For information about The Khalidi Library, visit its website.

Did you miss the first event in our series last fall? Watch the recording here.

January 29: Adab Colloquium with Presenter Murat Umut Inan and Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano

Friday, January 29, 2021, 1:10 PM - 3:00 PM

Register for the Zoom webinar here.

In this talk, Murat Umut Inan will discuss his forthcoming article entitled “Poetry, Muhammad, and the Ottomans: Süruri’s Bahrü’l-Ma‘arif and Conceptions of Poetry in the Early Modern Ottoman World”. Focusing on Muslihüddin Süruri’s (d. 1562) celebrated book on the art of poetry, he will explore the question of how poetry was viewed and understood in sixteenth-century Ottoman literary and scholarly circles, both as a form of artistic expression and as a branch of knowledge or scholarly discipline. Despite traditionally being seen simply as a poetry manual, the Bahrü’l-Ma‘arif presents us with a more complex case, in which the poet-scholar Süruri weaves into his work an Islamic defense of poetry and poethood grounded largely in Muhammad’s example.

Learn more about the Adab Colloquium at MEI here.

If you are interested in attending this event please download the pre-circulated reading.

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